Flight Time
by beast916
Summary: Sam Puckett waits through a storm at the airport for her flight to board, when she encounters someone she hasn't seen in eleven years.  Will mistakes from the past continue to keep them apart?  One-shot.


**Disclaimer: Once, many years ago, before you were born, before all was born, Dan Schneider and I fought for control of **_**iCarly**_**, a battle that spanned years and continents, until, finally...no, I can't speak of it, but let it just be said that for a stray shoelace, **_**iCarly**_** would have been mine.**

_**Note: This story is not related to any of my other stories, although I suppose, if you wanted, you could make a link. The story does not contradict any canon of the show.**_

Sam Puckett was going home for the first time in a year. She found it strange to call it home. She had lived in Seattle until she was eighteen and left for college, and Los Angeles had been home since she was twenty-three. Except, she mused, now it wasn't anymore, not for the last year, anyway. For the last year, she had been back in Seattle, though she had swore that she would never live there again. And now, even when she no longer had anything to keep her there, she was flying to Los Angeles to pick up everything she had left behind: the car, what little furniture she had, some clothes. Nothing else was there.

She looked up to the glass ceiling, where rain flowed like thick molasses. At this rate, her flight would be delayed indefinitely.

"Oh my god, it's you. Can I get your autograph?" Sam looked up to see a young girl, probably in her mid-teens.

"You listen to the show?" Sam asked.

"Every day. I love everything about it, especially 'Nub-hunting'." Sam smiled. She didn't like that skit herself anymore; she had introduced it when she first started the radio show, a product of residual anger. Over the years, she had realized she was angrier at herself, and it had lost its appeal. But it was probably the second or third favorite bit for the audience, and the station manager nearly had a fit when she last talked about cutting it from the show. And considering how far he went out of his way for her in the last year, she didn't protest any further.

"Thank you, Hambone," the girl said and smiled sweetly at her. "The Hambone Morning Show" was broadcast throughout the country, and still Sam had to specify who the fans were asking for when she signed autographs. She still had the occasional _iCarly_ fan come up to her, especially since she had come back to Seattle.

Sam looked back up at the rain, and her smile faltered. Melanie should have done this for her, Sam thought, but now she couldn't get Melanie to leave the house. Every time before, when Sam needed something from her apartment in Los Angeles, Melanie volunteered to go for her. It wasn't a favor. Sam knew Melanie couldn't stand being there. Unlike Sam, she never got used to the smell in the room. And Melanie couldn't be in the room without crying.

But ever since the funeral Melanie had barely been outside. She had taken a leave of absence from the law firm, and she spent most of her time at the house going through old pictures. Sam was going to give her a little bit more time to grieve before Sam had to administer a motivational ass-kicking. Although Sam had been there constantly for the last year, except for the hours in the morning when she was doing the radio show, Sam was not grieving. She had understood that first day she came back to the house that had been her home for the first eighteen years of her life, when she had looked at the creature on the bed that used to be her mother, that it was time to say goodbye. Pam Puckett, like every Puckett, was ornery and refused to go without a fight. Eventually, cancer beat her, and Sam didn't cry.

Except that night when their mother's body had been removed, and she and Melanie had fallen into each other's arms.

Rick, the station manager, had waited what for him was a decent amount of time and asked her if she wanted to come back to Los Angeles or to continue recording in Seattle. When Sam moved back Rick had made an arrangement with a local radio station there. A few people from the L.A. radio station who worked on her program had come with her to Seattle, while the rest had been reassigned. Rick had told her it was up to her, but she knew he also thought she was less of a pain-in-the-ass in Seattle, plus it was actually cheaper for the corporation. She thought about it for a minute and told him she would be staying.

Even now, sitting in the airport, she didn't know why she had told him. She didn't want to make the other employees move again, but that was not enough of a reason. It would be different if Carly still lived in Seattle, but she had been in Chicago for the last three years. Carly had finished with college and almost immediately had been cast on a reality show about surviving in a foreign country. Everywhere she went there she ran into _iCarly_ fans, and these encounters had been been video highlights on SplashFace. The last time Sam talked to Carly, which had been the day of the funeral, Carly had been taking singing gigs around the city, while waiting to see if she was going to get a second-lead part in a play.

She had seen Spencer twice since she had been in Seattle, but he had moved to Tacoma soon after the trio had started to college, so he wasn't any reason to stay. The last Sam had heard Gibby was in Florida. He was doing something with talent management, from what she gathered from Carly, something Sam couldn't really picture.

And Freddie Benson...well, there was a loaded question if there ever was one. Ironically, of all the people from her old life, Freddie was the closest to her physically. The last Sam had heard, Freddie was living in his old apartment at Bushnell. His mother had remarried and moved to Ohio, and Freddie had moved into the old apartment. He directed films and, according to Rick, would be big in Hollywood, except Freddie refused to go to Los Angeles, preferring to make independent films in his home city, films that were well-received and made a great profit. "But not as great as they would if he would just go to L.A.," Rick said with disgust. Sam didn't mind Rick directing his anger at Freddie. It took it away from her at the moment. The discussion about Freddie had quickly deteriorated after Sam had refused to have Freddie on the radio show. Rick couldn't understand why, and Sam didn't want to talk about it. Although Rick knew about _iCarly_, he had never seen an episode, and Sam wasn't willing to make him, because then she would just have to answer more questions.

She hadn't spoken to Freddie Benson in eleven years. Although they had been in the same city for the last year, she hadn't seen him, except for maybe that once...

"Can I get an autograph, ma'am?"

Sam looked up, sure that her mind an had been stuck in memories of the past, because it looked like the person asking for the autograph was none other than Freddie Benson himself, grinning down at her.

She blinked her eyes a few times. No, it was definitely him. He was holding out a small pad and a pen.

"Radio show or _iCarly_?" she asked, taking the pad and pen from his hand.

"Either one works."

"You listen to the radio show?"

"Every morning," he said. "Do you mind if I sit?"

She gestured for him to do so. _Are we really going to do this_, she wondered. _Are we really going about this like we're in one of his movies, where you see people meet and it seems like they've never met before, until you realize they've known each other their entire lives?_

He sat down and looked at her across the table. The pad and pen he had handed her sat forgotten between them, next to Sam's equally forgotten, and cold, coffee.

"Hey, Sam," Freddie said, quietly.

"How did you know I wasn't Melanie?" she asked. To others, nothing would seem out of the ordinary, but Sam could feel the tension between them, the rigidness of her body. Another scene from one of Freddie's movies. Only Melanie knew Sam owned them all. And even Melanie didn't know how often Sam watched them.

"Melanie could never scowl like you were doing before I came over. And Melanie has red hair now."

Sam looked at him. He was correct, of course. On both counts. Melanie had dyed her hair three weeks before their mother's death. She was, she told Sam, tired of people mistaking her for her sister. That Freddie knew Melanie dyed her hair meant that she had really seen Freddie when she thought she did.

"I saw you at the funeral," she said.

"Oh, yeah, well, I wanted to show my support to Melanie," he said. The easy confidence he had shown disappeared. Sam looked at him. She knew that he and Melanie were friendly, but they weren't exactly friends. When Sam, on the rare occasion she had too much to drink, had asked Melanie about her and Freddie, she had told her that she and Freddie usually saw each other once or twice a year.

"I'm sure she appreciated it," Sam said. She hoped that he wouldn't offer her sympathies. She wasn't the type to grieve openly.

"Going back to Los Angeles?" he asked.

"Nothing else here," she said. He hadn't offered her sympathy nor asked her how she was holding up. Maybe he just didn't care. Maybe to him she was just another old friend from high school you pass the time with and forget about until the next time you see them. She didn't want his sympathy, but she realized, disgusted with herself, that she wanted him to _care_.

"Too bad. First time I see you is when you are leaving."

"I'm just going to pick up my stuff and drive it back," she said, wondering why she was telling him that. Shouldn't she just want him to think she was gone?

"Oh." He looked up. The rain was falling just as heavily. "You might have to wait a while."

"Where you going to, Fredward?"

She saw the old Benson expression on his face, that part eye-roll, part smirk, that half-annoyance, half-happiness that used to make her want to grab him and throw him on the floor and punch him or make out with him. When they first knew each other, there had been plenty of the first. Before the end, there had been a lot of the latter.

"Orlando. Gibby invited me to some spring training games there. I just finished a...I was just ready for a little vacation." He had just finished a film, she knew that. She didn't know why he wouldn't want to bring it up.

They sat there for a moment. We've run out of words, Sam thought. Soon he will get up, say it was nice seeing you again, and then leave, and they would probably not see each other for another eleven years. And why would she want to see him again? Hadn't they destroyed everything that August eleven years ago?

But the thing about Freddie Benson, the thing she hadn't forgotten, no matter how much she wished she could, was that he never met her expectations. He had always surprised her, most of the time in amazing ways, some times in sad and depressing ways.

He did stand up. That was what she expected, but then he just moved to take the seat next to her. "I've missed you, Sam."

Sam's breath held for a moment. She hadn't been waiting for Freddie Benson to come back into her life. She hadn't been celibate since they broke up, because no other man would ever match up to the love of her life. She didn't believe in fairy tales. The truth was that no other man had matched up to Freddie Benson, but he had destroyed any chance they ever had.

"Well, maybe if you had some foresight the night of the party," she hissed. She saw him recoil from her, and even she wondered at the anger in her voice.

_It was the Friday after graduation, and it had been a week of parties. Soon, everybody would be at their summer jobs or preparing for college, but until then everybody was celebrating the release from high school. Sam was surprised that Carly and Freddie would go to the parties with her. She hadn't expected it to be their scene, but Carly had taken to drinking quite easily (so much so that Sam was relieved three years later when Carly told her she had given up drinking). Freddie was a lightweight. He sipped the same drink through most of the night, and he still seemed more buzzed than Carly, who was outdrinking some of the football players._

_Sam had gone to the bathroom. She had less than Carly, but considerably more than Freddie. She came back to the living room, and was just in time to see Beth Wilson kissing Freddie._

_Sam turned and went out the front door. When Freddie called her fifteen minutes later, she turned her phone off. She ignored the knocking on the door later that night. _

"Do you really want to talk about this, Sam?"

"I don't want to talk about anything. I just want to get on my flight."

He nodded and looked away. Without turning back, he said, "you know, what you think happened at the party isn't what you think."

"Oh, so Beth's lips weren't on your lips?" she asked.

"That's not what I meant, Sam," he said, his frustration showing. He turned back to her. "She kissed me. I didn't kiss her."

"I didn't see you stopping her," she said.

"That's because you didn't stay around long enough!" he shouted. Other people turned and looked at the two of them. Freddie held his head down, and Sam looked off to the side. Eventually, the other travelers went about their business. "I don't know how you can still piss me off like this after eleven years," Freddie whispered.

Sam said nothing.

"I did push her away. I was drunk, or I never would have let her kiss me in the first place. I hadn't understood what she was doing until she already did it. The kiss didn't last longer than a second, and I never wanted it."

"I know," Sam said.

_Sam ignored Freddie the rest of the summer. She was just waiting to leave for college. Both she and Freddie were going to college in California, although to different colleges. The colleges were close enough that they could have seen each other frequently, but she now hoped they were far enough so they didn't have to._

_Freddie left her voice mails, sent her letters, had flowers delivered to her. She ignored all this. She refused to go over to Carly's, forcing Carly to come to her house. Carly had cried. Sam never did. Carly felt like she had been torn between her two friends, and she wanted nothing more than to force them together. Sam had gone to the front door and told Carly if she talked to her about Freddie, then Sam wanted nothing to do with her again. Carly stopped bringing Freddie up._

_Freddie was persistent. There wasn't a day that there wasn't something waiting for her, even it was just a note that read _I'm sorry. Let me explain_. She didn't. Sam was used to people betraying her, used to men betraying, from her father to Jonah and now the one she never thought would, Freddie Benson. _

I'm never going to give up on you, Sam_, another note had read. Carly saw the note and said nothing, but flashed pleading eyes at Sam. Sam's heart was stone._

_She had become an expert at avoiding Freddie Benson, and she only had a week before she left for college. That was when he found her. At the library of all places. She had never thought he would look for her there, plus she had to research some things before she left for college, and her mom was too cheap to keep Internet in the house. _

"_Sam," said the voice she had been dreading._

"_Go away, Freddie," she said, and tried to move past him. He moved to block her. "Out of my way, Benson, or I'm going to kick your ass." _

_He didn't move. "Sam, please-"_

_And she had swung, with all the hurt and anger she had felt that summer. She had hit him plenty since she knew him, but since they were fifteen or so, none of those hits really had any bad intent behind them. Sometimes they were just her way of being able to touch the boy she had a crush on. Not this one._

_She felt the crunch the same time she heard it. And Freddie Benson was sitting on the grass outside the library, his hand held up to his nose, blood seeping through his fingers. Sam ran away._

_She had broken his nose, Carly told her. Sam didn't need to be told. She had felt it. And she had seen the next morning that no note waited for her. No flowers. Nothing. Finally Freddie Benson had gotten it through his thick head that you can't betray Sam Puckett and get away with it._

_Two days later she was in the studio at Carly's. Since Freddie no longer made an effort to hound her, she felt it was safe to come over to Carly's place. She had told herself she did not tiptoe past Freddie's apartment, that she walked as she normally did, that she wasn't afraid of seeing how bad his nose looked. It had looked that bad when she broke it; it would look worse now._

_She looked up to see Carly coming into the studio. She grabbed Sam by the hand._

"_Carly, what-"_

"_I'm not saying anything, Sam. I just need you to see something." She dragged the confused Sam downstairs to the computer._

"_Watch," Carly commanded. She pressed the play button on the video and walked away from Sam. Sam watched. It was the party they had been at. Somebody had recorded it. The scene was from a different angle that Sam had been standing at, and the camera person must have been hidden from her view by a wall. She watched as Beth bent down to kiss Sam's boyfriend. Freddie stopped for a moment, then pushed the girl away._

"_Why did you do that? I'm with Sam," he said, his words slightly slurred. "I have to find Sam." He got up, leaving Beth behind._

_Sam turned to see Carly staring at her. "What are you going to do, Sam?"_

"_I'm going home," Sam said. She left the apartment and ran past Freddie's door. Four days later, she left for college._

"You knew? Why didn't you say anything, Sam?"

"You weren't having anything to do with me at that point, Freddie. Not that I blame you. I did break your nose." She looked at it. It didn't look bad, but you could tell it had been broken at some point in the past. "We were both going to college, and there didn't seem any reason to talk to you about it."

"No reason," he said, his voice raised. He looked around, afraid he had brought attention onto them again. "I loved you, Sam. Wasn't that a good enough reason?"

"You never came back, Freddie. Not after I broke your nose. You never ran after me. And I realized that it didn't matter that you didn't kiss her. She did us both a favor. Because if she hadn't, then you probably would have suffered being with me, and now you don't. Now you get to make your movies and be happy dating actresses, and there's no Sam Puckett around to call you names or to hit you. We should thank her."

"Sam-"

"Flight 832, flying to Atlanta, with connections to Orlando and Charleston, will be boarding in twenty minutes," a tinny voice over the intercom said. Sam and Freddie looked up. The rain was gone. The sun peeked around one dark cloud.

"I guess that's you," Sam said.

"Sam," Freddie repeated.

"Do me a favor, Freddie. Just forget this conversation happened. We've gone eleven years. I'm sure we can do another eleven before we see each other again." She refused to look at him, and she looked down at the cloudy mist of her coffee. She wanted to break his fucking nose again, she realized, because she could feel the tears swimming in the back of her eyes. She had last cried that time in the room with Melanie, and no man had made her cry since...well, since Freddie.

Sam, I-"

"Goodbye, Freddie."

He sat there for a moment. "Okay. Have a good life, Sam." She heard the scuff of the chair being pushed back and then his footsteps as he walked away. She glanced through the strands of her hair and saw that he really was leaving, and she was upset at herself for being sad about that.

She looked at the pad and pen he had left behind. The pad was new, and there was nothing written in it. She picked up the pen and put it in her purse. The name of one of his movies was inscribed on the side of it. It was her favorite movie of his.

Sam went to the restroom and washed her hands. She looked at her eyes. Not too bad. She had been able to repress the tears. Maybe they were a little red. If somebody said anything, she would point out that her mother had just recently died and thank you very much for bringing that up, random stranger. She stayed a while, allowing time to collect herself.

When she came out she heard an announcement that her flight had already begun boarding. She was in coach, so she wasn't overly concerned. She only had an overnight bag with her, since she would be driving the car back with all her belongings. She boarded the plane, past the first class passengers with their lunches and drinks in real glasses and their newspapers blocking the sight of the peasants heading toward the back. She had been in first class once and loved it, but she never paid for it. It was too costly, and while she was well-off enough, radio was still economically unstable and she didn't like wasting money if she didn't have to.

She sat down in the aisle seat of the exit row. This plane had five seats in each row, three on the left and two on the right. She had gone online and chosen the one on the right. Less people. It was always a crapshoot, though. You could pick the best seat, but if a four-hundred pound person or somebody with amazingly ripe body odor sat next to you, you were screwed. Sam lucked out. The person sitting in the window seat was somebody's grandmother, or so she seemed. Not so old that she shouldn't be able to perform exit row procedures, but likely old enough she didn't know who Sam Puckett was and would likely leave her alone for the duration of the flight.

Sam nodded at the older woman and put her bag under the seat in front of her. She lightly snoozed through take-off, only waking up when the carts were going by with drinks.

"Excuse me, ma'am. Aren't you Sam Puckett from _iCarly_?" the flight attendant asked. She was using her flight attendant voice, but was unable to hide her excitement. Sam looked at her. She was probably two or three years younger than Sam.

"Yes, I am," Sam whispered.

"I hope you don't mind, but is there any chance I might get an autograph before the flight is over?" the flight attendant asked. Sam grabbed the napkin the attendant had set down, and pulled Freddie's pen out of her purse and scribbled a quick autograph. The flight attendant thanked her and left her alone.

Ten minutes later, the same flight attendant came up to Sam's row again.

"Excuse me, Mrs. Granderson?" The woman next to Sam looked up. "There is a seat in the first class section available for you to use, if you would like."

"Oh, my. I've never been in first class," Mrs. Granderson said. She looked at Sam.

"Go for it," Sam said. The woman gathered her things and went to the front of the plane, with a wide smile on her face.

"Excuse me, Miss Puckett. The person who offered the seat will be coming back here. Should I have him take the window seat?" Sam looked at her. The flight attendant was smiling widely, as if they were old friends. Sam got that a lot from _iCarly_ fans. Sam sighed. She moved her bag and scooted over to the window seat. If the guy weighed four-hundred pounds, she would personally kick Mrs. Granderson's ass.

She began snoozing again. The flight wasn't going to be long, and she had a lot to do when she got to Los Angeles. Not only did she have to pack everything, she needed to rent a trailer to put her furniture in. She would also have to stop and see Rick about what they were going to do about making the Seattle move permanent, as far as the higher-ups were concerned. Sam felt the seat next to her creak with the weight of the person sitting down. It creaked; it didn't scream. And she didn't feel a beefy arm hit her in the boobs, so she wouldn't have to kick Mrs. Granderson's ass.

"You look pretty innocent when you sleep."

Her eyes shot open, and she looked to her seatmate. Freddie Benson.

"What?"

"Hey, Sam."

"What are you doing here, Freddie?"

He looked down at her lap. "Well, I really like that pen, and I can't let just anybody have it."

She looked down, where his pen was clasped in her hands. "Freddie?"

"Look, Sam. I didn't come after you, because I thought you never wanted anything to do with me, not because I just stopped loving you because you broke my nose. You've done worse to me, and I still loved you. And there's no way I'm letting you win."

"What?" The person in front of her turned his head around at the sound of her voice. Freddie pushed up the partition between them and moved closer to Sam.

"You said that I never came after you. So I'm coming after you. If we're not gonna be, it's going to be because of you, Sam, not me."

"What makes you think that I would want anything to do with you, Fredward?"

"Just a theory," he said. "Guess I should test it." And he moved closer to her and pressed his lips against hers. She stared at his closed eyes for a second, and then she closed her eyes and felt the old feelings wash over her.

"Feels the same," Freddie said, after he pulled back. Sam could do little more than nod. She didn't notice that she had let his pen loose on the seat and was holding his hand.

"What about Gibby?" she asked.

He thought about it. "No, it feels different than Gibby's kisses." He smiled at her, and she punched him lightly on the shoulder. _One kiss, and I'm already acting like I'm eighteen again_. "I called him and told him I couldn't make it, that I had unfinished business to take care of."

"You know I'm just going to make you do all the packing."

"I know," he said.

"And you'll have to buy all my food."

"I know."

"You know I can be bitchy and blunt and stubborn."

"I've known all those things, Sam. I also know you're smart and beautiful and caring and ever since I was seventeen I never loved anybody like I loved you."

"What about that actress that went on to win the Oscar?"

"It's a rule that directors have to date at least one of their stars. I was just following regulations."

"You ran after me," she said.

"I know," he said, and reached out with his thumb and wiped the tear that had leaked down her cheek.

**A/N: I'm not sure where this one really came from, except, like most of my stories, it blossomed in my car as I was driving on my commute. I was actually practicing a speech that had nothing to do with anything that occurred in this story, so let's just thank whatever muse hit me with a idea-stick as I drove. Unless you don't like the story, then blame the muse, not me. **

**The weird thing for me is that I have in this story a lot of things that I don't normally think I would like. It's more Sam's point of view, when Freddie is my favorite character. It has Sam being violent with Freddie, which I usually hate (although I do feel that in my story, it at least makes sense, rather than Sam kicking Freddie in the balls, and them him still thinking later he sure thinks she's purdy-I know a lot of females writes these stories, so please take heed, once a girl purposefully kicks a guy in the balls, his romantic interest in her is pretty much nil). I also have the cliche bit about a person seeing another person kiss their loved one and leaving just a second too early. Ah, well. I hope you like it. Please review it, because my ego needs to be fed. If I don't get enough reviews, then...nothing is going to happen, since this is a one-shot. **


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